Last spring a bunch of designers /comic artists in my workplace came up with a great idea to collaborate on a comic book. Games was chosen as a central theme free to be used in any interpretation. The only other limitation was the length, the full story should be kept under ten pages long.
Anyone who has experience with working with a designer knows that they tend to be moody, oversensitive, egoistic and unorganised people with absolutely no concept of deadlines . If project managers didn’t have to spend all their time whipping their backs, nothing would ever get delivered. Ever.
And this project had no manager.
Neil Gaiman once visited Helsinki Comic Festival and told the audience one of the wisest pieces of advice I have ever been given:
I don’t think this comic book will see the daylight, so I am going to publish my own story page by page every Monday. Print is overrated anyway
So, Here is the first page of The Love Float. I will tell more about it after the last page, I won’t spoil the plot for you. Starring Venlala, hope you will enjoy it.
Oh dear, Five months of blog abstinence is a direct result of the northern summer: Finnish winter is long, cold and pitch black best spent playing MMOs or hibernating, but summertime is for fun and outdoors. To prove that I didn’t just build a time machine in May and set it to October, here are couple of ‘photos or it did not happen‘:
One of the photos a drunken photographer took in Espa in June.
My mum takes awesome photos, it was just a really blurry day A rabbit holding a candle, a gigantic balloon and me. Taidehalli, Aug 2009.
Fingerboard park, Kasarmintori, Helsinki.
Pipilotti Rist’s video installation in Kiasma. Or a red-haired Finnish fairy. You decide.
Far too soon the evenings have been getting darker and weather colder. Only last week it was hailing when I cycled home from work and I froze half of my remaining brain cells in one go. A bonus pic from Torni’s ladies’ room; this is what Helsinki is going to look like from now on – but much darker.
From the random photos to Great News: my dear friend Roi is now a married man (Hooray!), the bun is in the oven (Hooray!) and in April Roi will start a new hobby changing diapers (Hooray!). Gratz to Sonja too, well done! ^^
With Roi in Tuska metal festival, June 2009
Roi has been a great friend of mine all the way from our studies in Southampton Institute. Together we have been to more gigs than an average kid sees in a whole lifetime and now Roi gets to pass his great taste of music to the kid. How lucky is this baby going to be: falling asleep listening to the sweet Gothenburg sound. And naturally, Roi told me these great news in Raised Fist gig. All this will naturally mean less gigs for us together, but it sure happens for a good cause! From metal babies to last weekend’s CLUES TO HUMAN BEHAVIOR: Planet Fun Fun exhibition in Keravan Taidemuseo, where a workmate of mine is one of the displaying artists. Check out the piece below by Petri Ala-Maunus called There is a Place in Heaven for Me and My Kind. I am happy to live longer knowing I will eventually get to this Jehovan style paradise with added lambs and flames:
In September I turned 35 and am now officially old enough to fit into the cougar age group (aka hunt, prowl, corner, pounce):
Glad that aging women are trendy now. However, does this mean I will need to start checking ID’s now? Somehow, those hot calculating, man-eating huntresses couldn’t be further from me – I feel more like MacGyver instead. Anyone else old enough to remember the following dialogue in the first ever MacGyver episode:
Colson: “You know, it’s gonna take alot more than you can carry in that knapsack to get you through all this.”
MacGyver: “Well, the bag’s not for what I take Colson, it’s for what I find along the way.”
I was awarded in Bobba release party’s Draw-an-eggplant contest:
Receiving a eggplant from Leena, a representative of the jury.
My kitchen has been under construction since Christmas and only consists of microwave, toaster and kettle. Being a lousy chef, I had no idea what to do with my prize, so I asked my workmates for cooking tips.
Afterwards I found myself suppressing the eggplant in Kaltsu’s comic blog. Gordon Ramsay beware!
Venla Cooking
Venla: Bad eggplant! Bad eggplant!
…
Venla: I have been adviced that one has to make eggplant cry before cooking it.
Kaltsu: I understand.
Turns out my method wasn’t quite what they had in mind. (Tip for other noobs: I now know that making eggplant cry means salting, drawing out the moisture, so that the end cooked product is denser.)
This evening I took part in an interesting virtual meetup. I have been very frustrated with the recent Finnish political decisions considering digital media and laws. Jyrki Kasvi, member of Green League in the Finnish Parliament, is a candidate in the oncoming elections to become one of the representants of Finland in the Europe’s Union. I was keen to hear what he has to say a month before the voting.
The meetup was taking place in Second Life, the grandmother of all the virtual worlds. I have tried the service several times, but due to its clumsiness, dreadful lag, difficult user experience and generally annoying control system, I never got far. But this meeting sounded so interesting, I was willing to give it another go.
I created a default style female avatar, activated my account and the brand new me was ready to hit the road and the skies:
Hello Venlala Petrolhead, Welcome to Second Life! Now, get ready for some fun. A whole new world awaits you where the talk is free and there’s no limit on what you might discover alongside millions of other Residents from across the globe.
Traveling should be easy in virtual worlds, but it never is. I have spend hours on the backs of griffons, bats, raptors, wolves… Name it, I have done it. The instructions say I can simply type “EduFinland I” to the search box and hit teleport button. Brilliant. I do that, but nothing happens. I am still standing in the noob landing platform and there is no error message of any kind. The help guide suggests that I press ‘Detach All’ option before the jump. I obey, but only succeed in losing my character’s helmet (Nice terminator style cloth disappearing effect
Now I am bald and still stuck.
Next the help guide suggests is to fly up to 200 metres height and try to teleport from there. I fly up and press the button. Nothing. The first first fifteen minutes of the meetup is already over. However, I am getting more determined to continue to solve this problem and find out if anyone else has succeeded to turn up.
Five more minutes of scanning the help guide and pressing teleport button repeatedly and then I receive an error message: too many people in the other end prevents me from teleporting. I double-check to find out how big the crowd is. 62 people in the area of 1,000 square metres! There are more people in Orgrimmar AH on all the time on an average Tuesday afternoon. Sigh.
I go make a cup of coffee and wait. Half an hour after the meeting began, I finally manage to teleport to the green Island of Finnish Education. Almost there: the instructions advice me to walk to the signpost and press a red dot labelled ‘meeting point’ . Pressing that would get me to the right place, but none of the meeting points have red dots. Sigh.
I fly around the island, it all looks empty. I manage to find couple of ducks. I give up and sit down in front of the signpost and wait. Another character approaches from the horizon. He comes to me and says that he is lost. Together we explore the terrain until we finally arrive to the meeting. We manage to catch the two last sentences before it is all over.
I managed to get a screen grab and looks like some people had really made it in time. I am the bald one in the front right corner.
I wonder how Second Life can still be as clumsy, difficult and flaky after all these years in development. I was so frustrated after missing this virtual meeting that I did not continue to the virtual beers with the other participants.
I decide to customise my helmetless bald avatar instead. After a good half hour I still haven’t found any decent tools or textures to create anything but solid ugly flat coloured surfaces that would not even qualify for clothing. So, I ask Google for help. How to create skins in Second Life has been queried 14 million times. After scanning through the first tutorial, I don’t even really care anymore. It is amazing how difficult everything is. One has to be good in Photoshop to create anything decent, and even though I work with Photoshop on a daily basis, I just do not have the patience for it.
I hope the next virtual meetup will be held in Habbo, Azeroth, Norrath, Middle-Earth or Eve Online – I might even make it there in time to participate in the debate
In the latest South Park episode Pinewood Derby, the world leaders are concerned Finland is going to squeal and nuke it off the map.
Here’s a spoiler:
This species failed. No s**t, Sherlock.
Viacom is currently taking all-too-familiar action removing all the clips from Youtube quoting their usual copyright issues. And more cold water to the Finns – I tried link to the full episode in South Park website, but got this message instead:
Fingers crossed South Park manages to get rid of those pre-existing contractual oblication jerks asap.
The recent promise about the full movies and TV shows to be made available in Youtube sounded great, but don’t believe it, wrote Mark Hachman yesterday in PCMag:
Partners like Crackle, CBS, MGM, Lionsgate and Starz made thousands of TV episodes and hundreds of movies available on Youtube for consumers to watch for free beginning on Thursday, in a bid to challenge Hulu for dominance in the online video space.
Don’t believe it. Google has amassed a TV lineup only a sick old retiree could love, with movies that belong in the dollar VHS bin. At this point, the shocking lack of content only highlights how competitors like Hulu can and will succeed in a cutthroat market where content is king. Quite frankly, it’s a little embarrassing.
The full episode isn’t available in Hulu either, so it looks like Viacom is simply trying to prevent earthlings from watching online how Finland gets nuked. Luckily, all Scandinavians are taught in elementary school where to search for the full South Park episodes.
Four days of girly fun up ahead in French Alps with Rundgren’s Angels. Chamonix here we come!
I asked Minna what to bring along and she replied: dress and high heels. The suitcase is all packed and tomorrow 5am will get here soon, so it is time for a holiday song!!!
Hey Adam – this has dirty lyrics, so you should like it, too. Youtube probably punishes me for uploading the song and will pull it down in an hour, but I am in too good mood to go about ranting about music industry’s stone age approach towards video distribution. Dinosaurs will die. Enjoy the song (Grrr just noticed that the song cuts in the middle – full version that doesn’t allow embedding here. Man, the copyright/region issues suck, but it’s the thought that counts).
Take care & see you soon!
Couple of photos from Grand One digital media awards last Thursday in Apollo:
Antti & me – guess which one the photographer liked more… Or perhaps I am just blurring out from the photo Back to the Future style, eventually disappearing for good.
Our contest entry, the Habbo Xmas Campaign didn’t win, but we still had great time in the jacuzzi where you can leave your hat on…
The last photo of the evening taken from the dance floor shows how nice guys finish last AND in style. Natsku and Jaffa are in the zone, Mario & me in the back are admiring the mysterious hand Jaffa is carrying on his shoulder.
Afterwards we conquered Redrum dance floor. And yes, Friday morning sucked big time.
First the serious and the most important part: I have just signed this petition by Avaaz, which will be delivered to the Vatican asking the Pope to stop speaking out against condoms:
Last week, on his first visit to Africa, Pope Benedict said that “[AIDS] cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”. The Pope’s statement is at odds with the research on AIDS prevention, and a setback to decades of hard work on AIDS education and awareness. With powerful moral influence over more than 1.1 billion Catholics in the world, and 22 million HIV positive Africans, these words could dramatically affect the AIDS pandemic and put millions of lives at risk. Worldwide concern is starting to show results and a willingness by the Vatican to revise the statement – sign our urgent petition asking the Pope to take care not to undermine proven AIDS prevention strategies: http://bit.ly/11fFHK
Like his predecessor, Benedict XVI maintains the all-so-traditional Catholic doctrines on artificial birth control, abortion and homosexuality. There are 1.1 billion Catholics and this man would have the power to make people to listen – I simply wish he would use his advocacy to talk about tolerance, human rights and freedom of choice! Claiming that condom distribution is not an effective AIDS prevention mechanism is UNTRUE, and if it diminishes condom use, it will also be deadly. Please, sign the petition.
Last week Kokkola, a town in Western Finland decided to block people from using Facebook both at work and in schools. The official reason given was the added security risk from Facebook applications. Ooh, scary, so they wanted to prevent bad things from happening? The tone suddenly changes when the IT Manager Jan-Erik Widjeskog continues:
Ei kiellolla ole tarkoitus kiusata ihmisiä. Mutta se päätös hallinnon verkosta ottaa pois, niin sehän oli aika selvää, että ei ihmisillä ole aikaa käyttää tämmöstä työaikana.
(= We don’t mean to do harm to people with this restriction. But the decision to not allow the council-manager government and civil servants and to use it, it was pretty clear that they do not have time to use such things at work.)
So what is going on? Why has everything employees do at work suddenly turned to such a big problem for employers? Why is there this new trend of changing the rules towards monitoring and restricting people’s rights? And why aren’t people making bigger fuzz about it? The following poll was held in one of the biggest Finnish tabloid newspapers last week asking Should Facebook be blocked at schools and workplaces?
66% say yes… WTF? In recent blog entries I have ranted about the recently validated Lex Nokia snooping law. So, I guess MPs are only as stupid as the people that voted for them at the first place. And I am not ranting about Facebook here, I personally hate Facebook, but I am asking, who decides what is good for me and when is good and where is good. Why would banning sites make workplaces better? What motivational value adds the policy of “We know you are visiting sites that do not maximise your productivity, so we make sure you can and will only do what you are paid to do.”
I wish companies would instead value their most important asset, the people who spend one third of their day at work and provide them with trust and assets instead. I always do my best and the deal should be of mutual benefit where both parts win. That is the thing that should really matter.
I had been given a massage voucher as birthday present, but only got around of having it last week. The masseuse immediately informed me that she can see angels flying and energy flowing around me. She also informed that when I first walked in to her house, I didn’t arrive alone, but with my grandmother. That sounds cool, she was one hard lady, mean and tough, but she’s also been dead more than ten years now. Nice icebreaker for a cynic/atheist. Things got even more interesting, when she told me that in at least one previous life of mine I was killed violently, because I was believed to be a witch.
I have been witch even in this life and here’s the photographic proof of Seppo, me and my bro Kalle – two wizards and one witch.
Later when I informed my mum that her mother Agnes still likes hanging out with me, she replied: “Your grandma was an evil person.” Guess apples don’t fall far from the tree. About my violent death as a misunderstood healer she said that in one of her previous lives she had been a fisher, in another one she was living up in mountains and she went on and on… So even my mum believes in rebirth! o.O
For me all those previous lives sound silly – if we all have practiced beforehand, humankind should be doing much better. Frankly, I plan to live, die and not come back haunting you. Unless you deserve it. But if I turn out to be wrong and get to choose my next form, I choose an otter. Did you know that a bunch of otters is called a romp? Sounds like fun, romping with mates. I still love the classic Otters holding hands video:
After the massage I was given my personal zodiac star chart.
URSA Astronomical Association summarises the problem of horoscopes well (I apologise that everything seems to be in Finnish today):
My astronomical vocabulary is so limited that I don’t even try to translate that word to word. Basically, it says that 2000 years ago the zodiac was actually linked to the stars. However, their position has since radically changed due to earth’s precession – (Wikipedia provides a long, fascinating and difficult article to read, if precession is your thing). Nowadays the original positioning of stars is so different that the original calculation makes no sense. So, I wouldn’t recommend marrying someone based on their star sign.
From my own star chart I learned that the rising signs – “the sign of the zodiac that was rising in the point on the ecliptic that is furthest above the plane of the horizonare” – are the ones that people become in their 30’s. So, I was born September 11th and my star sign is a Virgo. But now I have transformed to my rising sign, which is a Cancer. Therefore I am no longer an anal & annoying organiser, who like things in good order thus annoying everyone around her. Good start, but what am I now?
Cancer sounds like an idiot as well. My mum simply commented my rising sign stating that if someone asked her, she would simpy define me as “yleisesti vittumainen ihminen” – (=Generally annoying/difficult/obnoxious person).
. If project managers didn’t have to spend all their time whipping their backs, nothing would ever get delivered. Ever.
Somehow, those hot calculating, man-eating huntresses couldn’t be further from me – I feel more like MacGyver instead. Anyone else old enough to remember the following dialogue in the first ever MacGyver episode:
